Photo credit: Robin Graubard Joanna Fuhrman is the author of Freud in Brooklyn (2000) and Ugh Ugh Ocean (2003) both published by Hanging Loose Press. She has just completed a third manuscript called Moraine. She lives in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn with her boyfriend the playwright Robert Kerr and their cat, Frankie. Buy her books here. See some work here and here. 1. What is the first poem you ever loved? Why? I remember Emily Dickinson’s “I’m Nobody!” poem (288) from an anthology of poems for children I had in elementary school. I remember saying it to myself, and it providing a kind of comfort. I thought of the poem as being a sort of friend, perhaps a substitute for the imaginary friends I had years earlier abandoned; “don’t tell there’s a pair of us,” Dickinson writes, and I remember feeling included in that, as if we shared a secret. My new manuscript is full of frogs-- I wonder if that’s connected. Not really sure. 2. What is something/someone non-“literary” you read which may surprise your peers/colleagues? Why do you read it/them? I like reading reviews of television shows even though I never watch T.V. and am not really sure how to get reception on the set in our apartment. I think it’s easy to feel disconnected from mainstream culture, to not have a clue what’s going on, so I like to read television reviews to get a glimpse. 3. How important is philosophy to your writing? Why? A friend of mine said once that he likes being around philosophers because they allow themselves to ask what might appear to be naïve questions, not to take anything for granted. I also like the inherent optimism of the discipline. But then, kind of paradoxically, I think the philosophy I am most attracted to tend to be the most melodramatically self-negating: Wittgenstein, Nietzsche, and to a lesser extent, William James. So yeah, there are some references to philosophy in my poems, but I think my work might have more to do with these philosophers’ anxiety about the value of the discipline than my occasional tongue-in-cheek-reference to Plato. 4. Who are some of your favorite non-Anglo-American writers? Why? There’s a lot, so its difficult to know where to begin. I am completely inept at languages so a lot of the poetry that I think of as important to me is in translation. Sometimes bad translation in itself can be an influence-- I grow to like a certain awkwardness. But yeah, I love Lorca (though reading all the lousy translations can be frustrating.) I still think the translations in that New Directions that I’ve had since I was fourteen are great, but I keep reading other translations which I enjoy, but they never enter my bloodstream in the same way. The poems I read when I was young, still provide a sort of background song for me. I think I should say Rilke, too, even though I rarely read him anymore. But when I was young, I read the translations of him all of the time, and I think it provided an idea of “pure poetry,” which I still hold up as a certain ideal of lyricism, but which I also have always wanted to rebel against in my own work. In a different vein, I still reread Tu Fu a lot, I love the changes in scale. His work also gains resonance in times of war. 5. Do you read a lot of poetry? If so, how important is it to your writing? I read and reread poetry all the time. Yeah, it’s essential. For me, poetry is a dialogue, between poets, between our versions of our selves, between the living and dead. If it’s poetry I dislike, I write against it, in a way. I’ll imitate bits and try to take apart its style and assumptions. Poetry I love reminds me why I want to write. 6. What is something which your peers/colleagues may assume you’ve read but haven’t? Why haven’t you? This could go on forever! I’ve hardly read any of the canonical novels which I feel I should have. Reading a novel, always feels like such a commitment. I have a difficult time getting hooked, and then once I am hooked I have a hard time pausing. I tend to need to read fiction for my job home-schooling a girl, so these days I don’t read all that many novels outside of what I think I might teach. 7. How would you explain what a poem is to my seven year old? A poem is words put together in a way that brings you pleasure and that you decide to label “a poem.” 8. Do you believe in a Role for the Poet? If so, how does it differ from the Role of the Citizen? I don’t think it’s the place of the poet to talk about the “Role of the Poet.” It sounds too self-important and pompous. I think poetry could have an important role in society, but not really “The Poet.” 9. Word associations (the first word which comes to mind; be honest): Lemon**zest Chiseled**ice Of**being Form**content 10. What is the relationship between the text and the body in your writing? This strikes me as a particularly impossible question. All poetry seems to me to a be a product of the body, insofar as the body and the mind are inseparable--our experiences of the world are filtered through our senses and our understanding or thoughts about our experiences are informed by our consciousness, which has been formed by our physical triumphs and ailments, and the way society treats us because of them. To talk about how the relationship works in one’s own work is like knowing how other people see you. So, I don’t think the relationship is something I could know for myself.